


a long time before we come down

by Care



Category: The Bold Type
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-16
Updated: 2017-12-16
Packaged: 2019-02-15 14:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13032792
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Care/pseuds/Care
Summary: A change (re)meeting on the street.





	a long time before we come down

**Author's Note:**

  * For [marginalia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/marginalia/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide, marginalia! Hope you enjoy!

The first time Kat sees Adena (well, not the _first_ first time — just — you know what she means), it's been four years, one month, and thirteen days since their break-up. It's raining, sweeping down in sheets, and the wind is tearing down 7th Ave with these big blustery gusts that rip through Kat's coat. She's white-knuckling her umbrella handle, struggling to keep _something_ over her hair, and then — _boom_. The flash of color from a headscarf. The glimpse of a familiar profile. Kat's heart thumps once, twice, and then _rat-a-tat-tat_ , a strange, quick beat.

Kat does the first thing she can think of: she ducks behind a nearby newsstand.

When she gathers enough nerve to peer around the side, Adena's gone. Like a hallucination, something out of a dream. Kat lets out a held breath, and in her distraction her umbrella turns itself inside out, and she's wet in about three seconds.

It's a great start to her morning.

~

The second time Kat sees Adena, it's a month and a half later, and she's _almost_ put the incident entirely out of her mind. (It's an _almost_ because her mind seems to skitter across the memory every few hours, an invisible scratch she can't reach.) Kat's late to meeting Jane and Sutton for lunch — the subway was inexplicably held up, as per usual — and she's two blocks away when, again, her breath catches and something seems to lurch in her chest.

She blinks, very rapidly, as Adena swims in and out of focus a few buildings ahead of Kat. Adena's laughing, her arm threaded through a strange woman's, their heads bowed close together as they walk.

_Oh_ , Kat thinks, frozen in place, and then realizes that she should probably cross the street, or leave, or anything, basically, but — 

"Kat?"

Too late. Kat steels herself.

"Adena!" she chirps, and she can tell her voice has a slight hysterical edge to it.

"Hi, wow, I was just talking about you," Adena says, rapidly closing the distance between them. She's smiling, and there's a genuine warmth to it that Kat _misses_ , and — oh god, Adena's girlfriend's coming up too. "It's been so long."

Kat swallows. "Yeah, like four years." She wishes she knew what to do with her hands. Should she hold them loose at her sides? Or maybe in her pockets? What looks natural? Fuck, what does she do with her hands normally? "So, uh, have you been back in New York long?"

"Not long."

The woman next to Adena frowns in thought. "A few months? Two? Hi, I'm Lily, Adena's friend. It's nice to meet you."

"Nice to meet you. I'm Kat." Kat's mostly just relieved to be doing _something_ with her hand, even if it's meeting Adena's new girlfriend. "Well, uh, welcome back."

"Yeah." Adena gives Kat this unreadable look, slow and steady. "I would love to get a drink sometime, if you want. Catch up."

"Uh, sure, yeah, okay. That's — yeah. A drink sounds good. I love to drink."

"Okay. I'll text you. You still have the same number?"

Kat waves her phone a little in response. "Yeah, actually, when I was abroad, I — you know, never mind. Yes. Same number. Just give me a text. Whenever. I'm not — yeah."

There's another quick exchange of looks between Adena and Lily. Kat's phone gives an unexpected _ping_ as it buzzes against her palm. She glances down at the screen, catching a glimpse of Jane's name just above an all-caps message punctuated with about a gazillion question marks. It's a _little_ bit dramatic.

"I gotta go," Kat says, holding up the phone in apology.

"Of course," Adena says, fast, like she's been waiting for Kat to bow out. "I'll text you."

"I'm looking forward to it. I'm — bye. It was nice to, um, yeah."

It's not until half a block later that Kat even realizes she forgot to say goodbye to Lily too. Well, not every interaction can be a winner, Kat supposes, though this one could have gone better.

It's fine though.

It's not like Adena will _actually_ text.

~

Adena doesn't text.

She calls.

She calls, without warning, like some kind of millennial monster. Who even picks up the phone these days? Kat's startled to hear her phone buzzing against her kitchen counter three days later, her mouth full of cold leftover noodles that she has to spit into the sink in order to answer. There's a half-second of shock when she flips up the screen and Adena's name and picture is staring back at her, one hand still clutching the takeout container, before Kat presses the phone to her ear.

"H-hi."

"Kat. Am I catching you at a bad time?"

"Nope." Kat wipes her mouth with the back of her hand. "I'm just eating some dinner."

"Oh, I'm sorry. I can call back — "

"No, really. It's fine. It's — nothing. Just leftovers."

Adena makes a small noise in the back of her throat, and Kat remembers hearing it, buzzing next to her ear when they lay in bed. It makes her momentarily dizzy. "Well, I wanted to say it was nice to see you and to see if you were still up for that drink. Unless you were just offering to be polite."

"I'm not that polite."

She hears the smile. "No, I guess not."

"I know you need to look at your calendar. I'm sure you're busy — "

"No," Kat says, surprising herself even. "How's Friday?"

There's a pause.

"Friday's good," Adena says.

~

Kat definitely _means_ to tell Jane and Sutton. Totally and definitely. But it just doesn't…come up. Not right away. And it feels weird for Kat to just bring it up out of the blue. She doesn't feel like it's something she can casually drop over mid-morning coffee. It's not even that they hold some kind of friend grudge against Adena because of the break-up — nothing about the break-up was even really that bad. As Kat's mother had put it, all the while giving Kat her best sympathetic-but-vague-therapist look, these things happened (her dad helpfully added that it was "nobody's fault" and Kat almost stormed out, it was such a parody of itself).

So, Kat says nothing, and Jane and Sutton don't ask, and it's not until the night before that it finally comes out. Kat's sandwiched between the other two on their couch, the three of them indulging in some midweek Netflix binge, and a bowl of popcorn is wedged firmly in Kat's lap.

"What are you doing Friday?" Jane asks, shoving a mouthful of popcorn into her mouth and talking around the kernels. She reaches back for another handful. "I have this thing, and I was wondering — "

"I'm seeing Adena," Kat says quickly, not taking her eyes off the screen.

In her peripheral vision, she can see both Jane and Sutton sputter, choking on their respective mouthfuls.

"What?" Jane croaks.

"You're seeing _Adena_?" Sutton demands at the same time.

Kat shrugs. "Yeah. You guys wanna watch the next episode?"

Jane irritably brushes aside the remote in Kat's hand, leaning in to her. "Uh, we have to talk about this. When did you even see her? Did you see her? How long has she been in New York?"

"Are you getting back together?" Sutton asks softly.

"No! We're not — it's just a drink. Or something. She hasn't been back that long, and I ran into her a couple days ago, and — it's nothing. We're catching up. I think she's dating someone."

There's a moment of silence. Kat can only imagine the looks Jane and Sutton are exchanging. She scrolls back and forth through the menu options, searching for nothing, just giving herself something to do.

"I think I'd like to be friends," Kat adds after a beat.

"Friends is good." Sutton slides her gaze sideways, somewhere behind Kat, towards Jane's direction. Subtle.

Jane puts a hand on Kat's shoulder and squeezes. "Friends is totally good. Whatever you want. We're behind you." A beat. "But if you didn't want to be friends, and you wanted to, I don't know, get back together — "

Kat laughs, pulling away. "It's not that! I'm serious."

"You just — you haven't…" Sutton trails off, looking like she's searching for the right words. "You were never as happy as when you were together."

"Oh, come on. What about Clara? And I feel like I was pretty happy with Ben."

"I said not _as_ happy."

Kat doesn't need to mull on _that_ when she already has enough to think about. She pushes it aside. "I'm _very_ happy, and this isn't a big deal, so let's just keep watching, okay?"

"Okay," Jane and Sutton chorus in unison, and Kat can almost convince herself that it sounds believable.

~

Of course, Sutton's not wrong.

Kat was happy.

And then — she wasn't. That's how things go. It got hard. It wasn't as fun. They wanted different things. All the cliches of who and what and why. It wasn't a big deal. Heartbreak was slow and gentle and it bruised rather than bled.

Kat just expected it to stop hurting at some point that maybe, now that she thinks about it, it never did.

~

Adena's already waiting when Kat arrives at the bar, slightly breathless from the walk. Kat watches her for a minute through the window before she steps in. She's always liked the way Adena composed herself, so much more elegant than Kat could ever manage. There was a precise flow to her movements that almost seemed studied. Adena's lips close over the rim of her glass — white wine — and Kat pushes open the door, steeling her nerves.

"Hey," she says, setting her purse down on the barstool next to Adena's.

There's a lingering moment of awkwardness while the two of them try to figure out if they should hug. Kat ends up going in for it, one of those hugs you give almost-strangers, where you embrace more air than person. It's the weirdest thing she's ever done with Adena, even when they barely knew each other. Kat flags down the bartender and orders in an attempt to distract them from the moment.

Adena waits until Kat's shrugged out of her coat, her drink placed on a coaster in front of them. "How are you?"

"Not bad. Okay. How are you?"

"Good, I think," Adena says. "I like being back in New York."

They order a second round after they finish the first, catching up on the last few years. It's easy to slip back into the way it's been, to a degree that Kat can almost forget that there's this gulf of time between them. Adena's not that different from the way she was back then. A little older, maybe, but her mannerisms, her gestures, the way she laughs, it's exactly as Kat remembers.

Two hours later and Kat's a little bit drunk, leaning against her hand as they talk. Everything is faintly warm and fuzzy at the edges, and maybe that's why she says what she does.

"Lily seems nice."

"She is."

There's a long beat of silence.

"I met her after we broke up. In London," Adena says, twirling the stem of her wineglass between her fingers.

There's a strange sensation prickling the back of Kat's neck, hot and uncomfortable. She takes a huge gulp of her drink.

"We're not dating."

Kat coughs. "What?"

"I told you when you met — she's my friend. She's living here now and I needed some place to stay when I first came back. If that's what you wanted to know."

Kat can almost see Adena's slow smile out of the corner of her eye. She ducks her head down. "No, that's not — " She gives a half-laugh and leans back slightly. "Okay, fine. That's exactly what I wanted to know. And, honestly, I'm glad."

"You are?"

Maybe it's the alcohol making her brave. Maybe it's the burn of it that pushes her forward. "Yeah."

Adena makes a humming noise that Kat doesn't know how to read. "Me too," she says, pushing her empty glass away from her. She gets to her feet, swaying slightly. She catches herself on the bar. "Do you want to walk me home, Kat?"

And Kat nods. Because Adena's looking at her in that way, her expression cracked and hopeful and gentle, and Kat doesn't know if she's ever been able to say no to that. Could ever.

Not that she wants to.

"Sure," Kat says.

~

She kisses Adena at the door. Just as Adena turns, her hands fluttering up to Kat's face. Kat doesn't have a words; she simply leans in to catch Adena's mouth with hers, to remember another door and another kiss.

It feels something like fate, except — Kat doesn't believe in that. Though, she thinks, Adena's lips soft and sweet on hers, maybe she should start.

~

Kat wakes up to the smell and sound of coffee beans grinding, in a bed that's both familiar and unfamiliar all at once. The apartment's not entirely different from how it was before, and Kat wraps a flat sheet around herself as she wanders through the bedroom. She trails her fingers across ledges and windowsills and bookshelves, picking up framed photographs and flipping through books. Adena's fiddling with the coffeemaker when she stops in the doorway of the kitchen. The morning light streams through, catching on the dark wisps of Adena's hair.

"Hey," Kat says, voice scratchy, padding barefoot across the tiled floor.

Adena adjusts the setting on the coffeemaker. She flicks her hair over one shoulder and turns to Kat, leaning over for a kiss. "Good morning."

Kat feels rumpled and brand new. She breathes in deep. "Good morning."

"You have a way of surprising me," Adena says, leaning back against the kitchen counter. She leaves a hand draped against the back of Kat's neck, her fingers tangling in the soft cloud of Kat's hair.

"Good surprises?"

Adena's smile is almost as brilliant as the sunlight, and Kat's heart flips over twice when she sees it. "The best surprises."

Kat flexes her palms against Adena's hips, dropping her lips to graze against the corner of Adena's mouth, the point of her chin. "So you're not opposed to maybe trying again?"

"You know, I think I'd like that very much."

Adena's laughter echoes in Kat's ear.

~

The five-hundredth and seventeenth time Kat sees Adena since they got back together is in their living room. Kat pushes open the front door of the apartment to find Adena sifting through piles of prints, her brow furrowed as she leans over the coffee table. She murmurs to herself, scratches on the back of a print with her pencil, and drops it onto the floor next to the couch as she reaches for the next one. Kat's come home to many a similar scene, so she just toes off her shoes and drops her keys onto the small table nearby piled high with opened mail and sunglasses.

"Hey babe," Kat says, careful to step around the piles of photos. "How was your day?"

"Good. Got lots of work done. Still working." Adena doesn't look up. "When are Sutton and Jane coming over?"

"Like half an hour. Is that okay? We can change apartments if you need us to. Movie night isn't _that_ sacred."

Adena frowns over something. "No, please. It's fine. I'll just take these into the bedroom. Are you ordering pizza?"

"Yeah. Extra cheese?"

"Yes, please."

Kat leans over the back of the couch. "Hey."

Adena glances up, her gaze a little dazed from focusing. Her expression softens. "Hey." She tilts her head up and kisses Kat softly. "I love you."

"I love you," Kat murmurs. "Go. Go destroy the bedroom with all of this brilliant stuff."

As Kat fishes out the pizza menu from the kitchen takeout drawer, she knows how the remainder of the night's going to go and something about that is strangely wonderful. She'll watch a movie with her two best friends while Adena flits in and out of the bedroom, distractedly making commentary whenever she comes out to fetch something. Sutton and Jane will leave, and Kat will put the rest of the pizza away — after she steals one last cold slice. And then she'll crawl into bed with her yawning girlfriend, the two of them lying in a sea of photos they'll be too lazy to clean up.

Kat smiles. She can't wait.


End file.
